Students’ Reasoning About One-Object Stochastic Phenomena in an ICT-Environment

This paper focuses on the different ways in which students in lower secondary school (14–16 year olds) experience compound random events, presented to them in the form of combined junctions. A carefully designed ICT environment was developed enabling the students to interact with different representations of such structures. Data for the analysis was gathered from two interview sessions. The analysis of the interaction is based on constructivist principles on learning; i.e. we adopted a student-oriented perspective, taking into consideration the different ways students try to make sense of chance encounters. Our results show how some students give priority to geometrical and physical concerns, and we discuss how seeking causal explanations of random phenomena may have encouraged this. With respect to numerically oriented models a division strategy appears to stand out as the preferred one.     

Bubble point pressure estimates from Gibbs ensemble simulations

Bubble pressure points of ethanol–1,1,1,2,3,3,3-heptafluoropropane (HFC-227ea refrigerant) mixtures from the third Industrial Fluid Properties Simulation Challenge are computed using publicly available molecular simulation software. Several published force fields are compared against the known answers provided in the contest guidelines and the best force fields are used to make predictions for the unknown results.     

JET: Preparing the future in fusion

JET (Joint European Torus) is the largest tokamak in the world and the only fusion facility able to operate with Tritium, the fusion fuel, and Beryllium, the ITER first wall material. JET also features the most complete remote handling equipment for invessel maintenance. As a multinational research center, JET provides logistic experience in preparing for operation of the global facility, tokamak ITER.Experiments on JET are focused on ITER-relevant studies, in particular on detailing the operational scenarios (EL My H-modes and advanced regimes), on enhancing the heating systems, on developing diagnostics for burning plasmas etc. Pioneering real-time control techniques have been implemented that maximize performance and minimize internal disturbances of JET plasmas. In helium plasmas, ion cyclotron heating (ICRH) created fast α-particles, mimicking their populations in future burning plasmas. The recent successful Trace Tritium campaign provided important new data on fuel transport. Current enhancements on JET include a new ITER-like ELM-resilient high power ICRH antenna (7 MW) and over twenty new diagnostics that will further extend the JET scientific capabilities and push the facility even closer to the ITER parameters.A special mention is given to the involvement of the fusion experts from Association EURATOM-IPP.CR, who have been actively participating in the collective use of JET facility for more than three years.     

Some Further Properties of the Accelerated Kerr-Schild Metrics

We extend the previously found accelerated Kerr-Schild metrics for Einstein-Maxwell-null dust and Einstein-Born-Infeld-null dust equations to the cases including the cosmological constant. This way we obtain the generalization of the charged de Sitter metrics in static space-times. We also give a generalization of the zero acceleration limit of our previous Einstein-Maxwell and Einstein-Born-Infeld solutions.     

Hysteresis and Eddy-current Relaxation in SiFe Materials

The rate-dependent effects in metallic ferromagnetic materials with magnetization processes attributed to domain-walls motion were studied. The experimental method for eddy-current relaxation time determination was proposed. Some discrepancies between the data and theoretical predictions were observed and discussed. The origin of these discrepancies is accounted for by the decrease of viscous-type relaxation process as the rate of change of averaged magnetization is approaching zero.     

Local automorphisms of operator algebras on Banach spaces

In this paper we extend a result of Semrl stating that every 2-local automorphism of the full operator algebra on a separable infinite dimensional Hilbert space is an automorphism. In fact, besides separable Hilbert spaces, we obtain the same conclusion for the much larger class of Banach spaces with Schauder bases. The proof rests on an analogous statement concerning the 2-local automorphisms of matrix algebras for which we present a short proof. The need to get such a proof was formulated in Semrl's paper.

     

The Heck reaction under ball-milling conditions

The synthesis of unsaturated unnatural amino acids according to the Heck-Jeffery protocol using a ball-milling procedure is presented. NOE data recorded on the products confirm that the Z-isomer is formed. This type of mechano-chemistry provides an efficient, “solvent free” and reliable method for the synthesis of substituted dehydroalanines. These conditions provide patterns of reactivity complementary to conventional procedures.     

On the Hahn--Mazurkiewicz theorem

The following generalization of the Hahn-Mazurkiewicz theorem is proved: Let (E,e) be a locally compact locally connected metric space. Let M be a continuum in this space and let d,e∈ M. Then there is a continuous mapping f: [0,1]→E such that f(0) = d, f(1)= e and M⊂f([0,1]). Also some corollaries of this theorem are proved.     

Confidence regions in a multivariate regression model with constraints II

The multivariate model, where not only parameters of the mean value of the observation matrix, but also some other parameters occur in constraints, is considered in the paper. Some basic inference is presented under the condition that the covariance matrix is either unknown, or partially unknown, or known. Supported by the grant of the Council of Czech Republic MSM 6 198 959 214.